Hypocrite Osborne launches own Mansion Tax: £53,000 stamp duty

Those with properties on the £2m threshold of Labour’s proposed Mansion Tax, a measure slammed by the Tories and a centrepiece of their campaigning, will be hit with a £53,750 increase in stamp duty, documents for George Osborne’s autumn statement have revealed. This figure is equivalent to, errr, 18 years of Mansion Tax payments.

“Once Labour introduce a homes tax, it will be people with homes worth a fraction of that who will be clobbered with it.”

Indeed. As Scrapbookrevealed last week, the Tories have been sending round the following begging letter in wealthy areas of the capital, asking for donations to fight the Mansion tax — and scaremongering that homes below the threshold could be caught (more details here):

One wonders what homeowners who coughed up a donation on the basis that their £1-2m home could be hit by the Mansion Tax (which can be deferred until sale for those earning less than £42,000) thinks of their new effective Stamp Duty hike: